Monday, November 17, 2008

BBR wine list from 1909

Berry Bros & Rudd, the famous London wine merchant, recent sent out a copy of their price list from 1909. It makes for interesting reading (unfortunately, it wasn't proofread properly and so the rather mixed up fonts ruin the visual appeal). Three points. First, the world of wine was much smaller then. Secondly, wines were valued rather differently: top German wines were as sought after as classed growth Clarets. Finally, the differential between the cheap and expensive wines is much less than now. You can download it here.

[Later edit] BBR have sent me a scan of the same page of the original list, which I'm reproducing below:

9 Comments:

Thanks, Jamie. It would be interesting to see merchants' lists from earlier centuries, too: there'd be the makings of a little book in that, I'd say, in the non-fiction, what-to-buy-the-old-man-for-Christmas vein.

I am very glad that you enjoyed reading our replica of Berrys' 1909 Price List which we recently sent out in conjunction with our 2009 list. It is indeed fascinating to see market trends from 100 years ago. I would however like to point out that this was a faithful reproduction of the original list (still held in the records at 3 St James's St) and, as such, the different font sizes were deliberately left in as per the original. It was indeed a very different world back then, for print as well as wine, and the intention was that the variable typefaces and spellings of wine names would give a flavour of what it was like to be a Berrys' customer in 1909.

I would be happy to scan/fax you a copy of the real 1909 list if you are interested in a direct comparison.